Ha!

After the depressing week I have been having equally depressed Saturday today.

Recently my life have felt like a roller coaster ride, going up and down, up and down with my moods, almost as if I was bipolar. I did a depression prediction test (I compared myself to the UK population, as this is the culture I identify with at the moment). It did not looks like I am doing very well:
“Given the answers to the questionnaire, your chance of becoming depressed over the forthcoming 12 months is 40.05%, as compared to the average chance of 8.84% in the UK.”

I no longer go to work with a smile like I did in my previous postdocs. I have not heard from the three applications I have sent for postdocs in UK last month and I began to loose hope.

Last week though there was this tiny idea, which has given me a tiny bit of hope, and I saw a light at the end of the tunnel for a few seconds and I got up and started walking again (I was on the sit-down strike there).

That idea came when reading a paper written by my collaborator, or a collaborator of my PIs, on my previous project in Scotland. I stumbled upon it while browsing my old uni website for some postdoc jobs in this favourable location. He had just got a Nature paper out with a Japanese colleague of his.

This reminded me of the plan I had exactly a year ago, to apply for JSPS scholarship (postdoc fellowship for 12-24 months for foreigners in Japan) with this Young Japanese Professor. At that time last year I had given up on this idea, because I needed a job very soon and I got it in England, which was way closer and sooner than waiting for half a year to hear about an outcome of a scholarship application.

After seeing their Nature paper I remembered my last year plan and wondered how I could have forgotten about this option! At first, when I came here, I was considering applying for JSPS with the Old Big Boss, but given that I am not that happy here I decided against this option - I did not want to prolong my suffering here unnecessarily. I've almost given up on the JSPS idea completely.

Now that the Young Japanese Professor has a Nature paper under his belt it gives him a higher chance of winning the JSPS scholarship (the applications are evaluated on "everything", the strength of the candidate, the strength of the Japanese host, and probably the strength of their personal connections too). I had this idea on Wednesday the previous week and I got so excited I could not fall asleep.

I was editing an email to YJP over and over in my head for several days, but I had no courage to write it. I feared the rejection too much. I did not want to hear if, for example, the university where YJP works is not willing to host me, or whatever. I feared the "no reply" (or ignorance) option as have been the case with my recent UK applications.

Finally I took some courage and wrote the draft email last Tuesday and got it checked and improved by the friendly English Teacher, who also helped me to choose the appropriate title for the email. I have been nervously checking my mailbox since Wednesday and slowly loosing hope to see the reply.

I know, I know. Professors are busy, but there are also other options, maybe my email got eaten by the spam filter, who knows if he even got it?

I have received the reply today. My heart started pounding. I was very nervous when I was sending the email (I forgot to attach the CV, as always, and I had to send it in a second email) and now I was afraid to read the answer. Of course, I could clearly see the chance that the answer is for any number of reasons negative. But it wasn’t!

It was such a relief. (I even went on and did a little Indian war dance impression in the bedroom after reading the email.) The Young Japanese Professor is interested in hosting me for the JSPS scholarship and asked me to come and visit his lab / talk science.

“Thank you for your interest in our group.
I would be very happy to have you in our group as a JSPS fellow.”

Ha!